President Michelle Bachelet announced a plan to buy and return disputed ancestral lands to Chile's indigenous communities as part of a strategy to better incorporate them into the country's political process and economic development.

Increased production and consumption of quinoa, coupled with higher visibility of and greater scientific knowledge about the so-called Andean super crop is the legacy left to the world by the International Year of Quinoa 2013, the closing ceremonies of which were held in Bolivia and Peru.

Bolivia will again belong to the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs after its bid to rejoin with a reservation that it does not accept the treaty’s requirement that “coca leaf chewing must be banned” was successful Friday. Opponents needed one-third of the 184 signatory countries to object, but fell far, far short despite objections by the US and the International Narcotics Control Board.

Hundreds of members from indigenous tribes opposing a jungle highway financed by Brazil and that they say will spoil their lands in Bolivia's Amazon drew cheers Wednesday when they paraded into the capital La Paz after a 63-day protest march.

On the Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the United Nations reaffirms the rights of indigenous peoples and the shared commitment to advance the values of equity, justice and dignity for all.